Jim Elliot - No Fool

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot

lose." Jim Elliot

JI Packer the Gospel

J.I. Packer

The Content of the Gospel

Introduction

In the Bible, the gospel is the entire saving plan of God, all revolving

around the person, the place and power of our Savior Jesus Christ, the

incarnate, crucified, risen, reigning, returning Lord.

Preaching the gospel requires us to show how Jesus Christ relates to

every part of God's plan, and how every part of it relates to us who are

savingly related to the living Christ through faith.

Evangelism involves explaining life in Christ as well as

inviting sinners to Him. This means dealing with six

main topics, as follows:

1. The Truth about God.

The one God who made and rules everything is revealed as three persons through His plan of

salvation. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit love us, and work together to save us from sin

and make us holy. Jesus Christ, God the Son incarnate, is Lord over all the powers of evil. Any

other view of God is idolatry.

2. The Truth about Ourselves.

We were made for God, to bear His image and be like Him in moral character, but sin controls and

spoils us so that we need to be brought back to God to be forgiven and remade. Jesus Christ, who

brings us back, is Himself the model of true godliness. Any other view is deception.

3. The Story of God's Kingdom.

Step by step, as Scripture tells, God has been working to establish His kingdom in this fallen

world. Jesus Christ is the King, and our lives are to be His kingdom. King Jesus is also the Judge,

and those who have not bowed to His kingship here will not share His joy hereafter. Trusting, loving

and honoring Jesus, and serving others for His sake, is true godliness at its heart. Any other form

of religion is error.

4. The Way of Salvation.

Jesus Christ, our sinbearer on the cross, now from His throne reaches out to rescue us who are

lost in the guilt and shame of sin. He calls for faith (trust in Him as Savior) and repentance (turn to

Him as Master). He sends His Holy Spirit to change us inwardly so that we hear His call as

addressed to us personally and respond wholeheartedly to it. Whereupon we are forgiven and

accepted (justified); received as God's children (adopted); made to rejoice at our peace with Him

(assurance); and made to realize that now we are living a new life in Christ (regeneration). Any

other view of salvation is deficient.

5. The Life of Fellowship.

Christians belong in the church, the family of God, sharing its worship, work, witness and warfare,

and enjoying its worldwide brotherhood in Christ. Any other view of the Christian is sectarian.

6. Walking Home to Heaven.

Helped by the ministry in the church of word and sacrament, prayer and pastoral care, spiritual

gifts and loving support, Christians live in our constantly hostile world as travelers, heading for a

glorious destination. Led and inspired by their Savior through the Holy Spirit, they seek to do all

the good they can as they go, and to battle all forms of evil that they meet. Any lesser view of the

Christian life is wordly.

All this is permanently and universally true, transcending all differences of color, race, culture, age,

gender, health, economic standing, social position and political background. As the Father, the

Son and the Holy Spirit sustain us all, so the gospel levels us all, teaching us to know ourselves

as great sinners saved by God's greater grace, and to see all nonChristians as needing that same

grace themselves.

For reflection and Consideration:

1. How completely am I preaching the Gospel?

2. Which of these six Gospel topics do I need to preach more fully than I have been preaching?

3. Am I including the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in my preaching?

4. Am I properly explaining the saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ?

Culture Shock

There are generally three stages of this  Phenomenon. called culture shock: The honeymoon stage(where everything seems wonderful and new), the critical stage(where you question why they can't just do things like you do in your own country you know the right way!), and readjustment(where you settle in and become more comfortable with the cultural differences).

Take Up Your Cross

1 "Take up your cross," the Saviour said,
"If you would my disciple be;
Take up your cross with willing heart,
And humbly follow after me."

2 Take up your cross; let not its weight
Fill your weak soul with vain alarm;
His strength shall bear your spirit up,
And brace your heart and nerve your arm.

3 Take up your cross; nor heed the shame,
And let your foolish pride be still;
Your Lord refused not e'en to die
Upon a cross, on Calv'ry's hill.

4 Take up your cross, then, in his strength,
And calmly sin's wild deluge brave;
'Twill guide you to a better home,
It points to glory o'er the grave.

5 Take up your cross, and follow on,
Nor think till death to lay it down;
For only he who bears the cross
May hope to wear the glorious crown.

- Commitment, Mission, Hymn, Sacrifice

Sex: How? Why? What? The Teenagers Guide - Jane Goldman

Author: Jane Goldman

Date: 1996

Source: Sex: How? Why? What? The Teenagers Guide

Publisher: Penguin Books

City: London

Pg 37 I think about sex all the time?

You bet! You see, the hormones that cause all the physical changes in your body during puberty don't just make you sprout hairs and suchlike. They also get working on your brain, quite apart from that, sex is jolly interesting, and thinking about it can be a very nice, exciting thing to do with your spare time! Even if you can believe that you're perfectly healthy and normal, thinking about sex all the time can still make you feel uneasy, because you can feel that you're losing control of your brain.

Pg 39 I often imagine having sex with people I know, or famous people. I really enjoy it. Is it okay?

Its called fantasising. It's more than okay, and nearly everybody does it at some time in their life. It's just like daydreaming, only its main purpose is to make you feel excited in a sexual way.

Fantasising is a fantastically healthy way to discover more about your own sexual feelings, so you should never feel guilty about doing it.

Pg 51 others with strong religious beliefs that sex and the sexual organs only existed in order for married people to make babies, and that using the genitals for any kind of sexual pleasure B especially outside of marriage was sinful. There are still people about who think the same way. Of course, everyone is entitled to their won't beliefs, but people also have a right to know the truth. Facts are facts, and the plain truth is that masturbations is not harmful.

Pg 59C Some parents have very strong views that young people shouldn't have sex at all, or that sex should be saved for marriage. Changing their minds is likely to be impossible. In cases like this, you're best off keeping some things secret, but that doesn't mean you should sneak around and go against what they say.

Pg 78&9 If you're considering taking a relationship further i.e. Having sex not just for the first time but any time, you should always ask yourself these questions

* Do I really like, fancy, care about or maybe even love my prospective partner?

* Do they like fancey, care about or maybe even love me, too?

* If I don't feel like I want to have sex now, would my partner be prepared to wait until I do?

* Am I certain that my partner is okay about us using a condom?

* Have I or my partner got a condom already, or is one of us prepared to go out and buy some before we decide to have sex?

Pg 81 What if I don't get a chance to think carefully before I have sex?

That happens. You might be in a very intimate situation - alone with someone, having a passionate snogging and petting session and suddenly you realise that you're on the verge of losing your virginity. In these cases, you just have to go with your gut instinct,  do you really want to do it?  Not because all your friends have, not because you're scared of losing your partner, not because you figure you might as well now you're this close to it, nor because you're worried about being a tease if you back out, but because you really, really want to experience sex and closeness with this person, right now? If the answer is a definite yes, then as long as one of you has a condom ready to use, there's no reason why you shouldn't go ahead.

Pg 164 Sex for sex's sake can be wonderful between two people who think the same way.

No Solicitors Portland, Or

No Solicitors
We are Happy just the way we are

Oregon Lottery, It does good things.

Oregon Lottery

It Does Good Things
Oregon Lottery

About as rational as anything in this day and age

- Real Think, Double Speak,

How Men Think

1. Men are not mind readers.
2. Learn to Work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down. we need it up. You need it down. You don’t hear us complain when you leave it down.
3. Crying is blackmail
4. As for what you want. Let us be clear on this on.  
5. Subtle hints do not work!
6. Strong Hints do not work!
7. Obvious hinds to do not work!
8. Just say it!
9. Yes and no are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
10. Come to us with problems only if you want help solving it. That’s what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
11. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, al comments become null and void after 7 days.
12. If you think your fat you probably are. Don’t ask us.
13. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry we meant the other one. 
14. One can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it done. Not both. I you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
15. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to do during commercials.
16. Christopher Columbus did not need direction and neither do we.
17. All men see in only 17 colours, like windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, Not a colour. pumpkin is also a vegetable or fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.
18. If ask what is wrong and you say, Nothing,” we act like nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle. 
19. I you ask a question you don’t want an answer to. Expect an answer you don’t want to hear.
20. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine, really
21. Don’t ask what we’re thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as football or mortar sports.
22. You have enough clothes
23. You have to many shoe
24. I am in shape, round is a shape

Thank You for reading this, Yes, I know, I'm sleeping on the couch tonight...but did you know men don't mind that? It's like camping....

Mac Hammond on Marriage

Author: Mac Hammond

Source: Heirs together

Pg 15 But what if I married the wrong person many people ask. You'd be amazed how many people the devil torments with that question.

I remember a young lady who came to my office on day and insisted she had gotten out of God's will, married the wrong person. Now she was doomed to suffer until she got rid of him and found the right one or so she thought.

...

God causes all things to work together for Good to those who love Christ and are called according to His purpose (Rom 8.28). Maybe you did miss God's best when you chose your spouse. Maybe you were in rebellion at the time. But God still wants to make that marriage glorious, fulfilling reflection of Jesus' relationship with he church.  He's committed to working that situation out for Good.

All you need to do is determine to make it work.

The first attitude adjustment is decide once and forever that divorce is not an option. If you continue to consider divorce as even a remote possibility, you might as well stop reading this article ad go watch  television, because it isn't going to do you any good.

The second attitude adjustment you may need to make is this: you must be concerned with changing not one but yourself.

The third attitude adjustment you must make is forget the past. Y what do you need to forget. the Good things and things and the bad things. They are startled to hear  they should forget the good things in their past. If you dwell on how good things were in the past, you're creating in yourself dissatisfaction and resentment about the way things are now. you also open yourself up to a spirit of  grief and despair. It happens allt the time. Women talk about how effectionate and considerate their husbands used to be, how attentive he was. But now, he's just an inconsiderate louse.

Dwelling on the good things in the past will distort your perception of the present and undermine  your hope for the future

Christian Hedonism by John Piper Desiring God Ch 9

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their

lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his

followers except the adoption of Christ's purpose toward the

world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but

husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy

of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The

men who are putting everything into Christ's undertaking are

getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.

J. Campbell White ( 1909)

Secretary of the Laymen's Missionary Movement

Surely there can be no greater joy

than that of saving souls.

Lottie Moon (1887)

"Patron Saint of Baptist Missions"

Chapter 9

Missions:

The Battle Cry of Christian Hedonism

Did Moses or Paul Retire?

Most men don't die of old age, they die of retirement. I read somewhere that half of the men retiring in the state of New York die within two years. Save your life and you'll lose it. Just like other drugs, other psychological addictions, retirement is a virulent disease, not a blessing.1

These are the words of Ralph Winter, founder of the United States Center for World Mission. His life and strategy have been a constant summons to young and old that the only way to find life is to give it away. He is one of my heroes. He says so many things that Christian Hedonists ought to say (although he wishes I would not use the word "hedonist")!
Not only does he call retired Christians to quit throwing their lives away on the golf course when they could be giving themselves to the global cause of Christ, but he also calls students to go hard after the fullest and deepest joy of life. In his little pamphlet, "Say Yes to Missions," he says, "Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame . . . To follow him is your choice. You're warned! But don't forget the joy."

In fact, in all my reading outside the Bible over the past fifteen years, the greatest source of affirmation for my emerging Christian Hedonism has been from missionary literature, especially biographies. And those who have suffered most seem to state the truth most unashamedly. I will tell you some of my findings in this chapter.

But first, back to the issue of retirement. Winter asks, "Where in the Bible do they see that? Did Moses retire? Did Paul retire? Peter? John? Do military officers retire in the middle of a war?"2 Good questions. If we try to answer them in the case of the apostle Paul, we bump right into a definition of "missions" which is what we need here at the beginning of this chapter.

As Paul writes his letter to the Romans, he has been a missionary for about twenty years. He was between twenty and forty years old (that's the range implied in the Greek word for "young man" in Acts 7:58) when he was converted. We may guess, then, that he was perhaps around fifty as he writes this great letter.

That may sound young to us. But remember two things: In those days, life expectancy was less, and Paul had led an incredibly stressful life-five times whipped with thirty-nine lashes, three times beaten with rods, once stoned, three times shipwrecked, constantly on the move and constantly in danger (2 Corinthians 11:24-29).

By our contemporary standards he should perhaps be "letting up" and planning for retirement. But in Romans 15 he says he is planning to go to Spain! In fact, the reason for writing to the Romans was largely to enlist their support for this great new frontier mission. Paul is not about to retire. Vast areas of the empire are unreached, not to mention the regions beyond ! So he says,

Now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be sped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a little. (Romans 15:23-24)

Paul was probably killed in Rome before he could ever fulfill his dream of preaching in Spain. But one thing is certain: He was cut down in combat, not in retirement. He was moving on to the frontier instead of settling down to bask in his amazing accomplishments. Right here we learn the meaning of missions.


The Meaning of Frontier Missions

How could Paul possibly say in Romans 15:23, "I no longer have any room for work in these regions"? There were thousands of unbelievers left to be converted in Judea and Samaria and Syria and Asia and Macedonia and Achaia. That is obvious from Paul's instructions to the churches on how to relate to unbelievers. But Paul has no room for work!

The explanation is given in verses 19-21,

From Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ, thus making it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on another man's foundation, but as it is written,

They shall see who have never been told of him, and they shall understand who have never heard of him.

Paul's missionary strategy is to preach where nobody has preached before. This is what we mean by Frontier Missions. Paul had a passion to go where there were no established churches-that meant Spain.

What is amazing in these verses is that Paul can say he has fully preached (literally: "fulfilled") the gospel from Jerusalem in southern Palestine to Illyricum northwest of Greece! To understand this is to understand the meaning of Frontier Missions. Frontier Missions is very different from domestic evangelism. There were thousands of people yet to be converted from Jerusalem to Illyricum. But the task of Frontier Missions was finished. Paul's job of "planting" was done and would now be followed by someone else's "watering" ( 1 Corinthians 3:6).

So when I speak of missions in this chapter, I generally refer to the Christian church's ongoing effort to carry on Paul's strategy: preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and planting his church among groups of people who have not yet been reached.

The Need for Frontier Missions

My assumption is that people without the gospel are without hope, because only the gospel can free them from their sin. Therefore missions is utterly essential in the life of a loving church, though not all Christians believe this.

Walbert Buhlmann, a Catholic missions secretary in Rome, spoke for many mainline denominational leaders when he said,

In the past we had the so-called motive of saving souls. We were convinced that if not baptized, people in the masses would go to hell. Now, thanks be to God, we believe that all people and all religions are already living in the grace and love of God and will be saved by God's mercy.3

Sister Emmanuelle of Cairo, Egypt, said, "Today we don't talk about conversion any more. We talk about being friends. My job is to prove that God is love and to bring courage to these people."4

It is natural to want to believe in a God who saves all men no matter what they believe or do. But it is not biblical.5 Essential teachings of Scripture must be rejected to believe in such a God. Listen to the words of the Son of God when he called the apostle Paul into missionary service:

I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and bear witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles-to whom I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. (Acts 26:16-18)

This is an empty commission if in fact the eyes of the nations don't need to be opened, and they don't need to turn from darkness to light, and don't need to escape the power of Satan to come to God, and don't need the forgiveness of sins that comes only by faith in Christ who is preached by the Lord's ambassadors. Paul did not give his life as a missionary to Asia and Macedonia and Greece and Rome and Spain to inform people they were already saved. He gave himself that "by any means [he] might save some" ( 1 Corinthians 9:22).

So when Paul's message about Christ was rejected (for example, at Antioch by the Jews), he said, "Since you thrust the word of God from you and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles" (Acts 13 :46). At stake in missionary outreach to unreached peoples is eternal life! Conversion to Christ from any and every other allegiance is precisely the aim. "For there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

The Justice of God in Judgment and Salvation

God is not unjust. No one will be condemned for not believing a message they have never heard. Those who have never heard the gospel will be judged by their failure to own up to the light of God's grace and power in nature and in their own conscience. This is the point of Romans 1:20-21.

Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse: for although they knew God they did not glorify him as God or give thanks to him.

Apart from the special, saving grace of God, people are dead in sin, darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God and hardened in heart (Ephesians 2:1, 4:18). And the means God has ordained to administer that special saving grace is the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish; so I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel: It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. (Romans 1:14-16)

The Effects of Universalism on Missions

The notion that people are saved without hearing the gospel has wreaked havoc in the missions effort of denominations and churches that minimize the biblical teaching of human lostness without Christ. Between 1953 and 1980, the overseas missionary force of mainline Protestant churches of North America decreased from 9,844 to 2,813, while the missionary force of evangelical Protestants, who take this biblical teaching more seriously, increased by more than 200 percent. The Christian and Missionary Alliance, for example, with its 200,000 members, supports forty percent more missionaries than the United Methodist Church with its 9.5 million members. There is amazing missionary power in taking seriously all the Word of God.6

Many Christians thought the end of the colonial era after the Second World War was also the end of foreign missions. The gospel had more or less penetrated every country in the world. But what we have become keenly aware of in the last generation is that the command of Jesus to make disciples of "every nation" does not refer to political nations as we know them today. Nor does it mean every individual, as though the great commission could not be completed until every individual were made a disciple.

What Are People Groups?

We are increasingly aware that the intention of God is for every "people group" to be evangelized-that a thriving church be planted in every group. No one can exactly define what a people group is. But we get a rough idea from passages like Revelation 7:9.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb ....

It is almost impossible to draw precise distinctions between "nations," "tribes," "peoples" and "tongues." But what is clear is that God's redemptive purpose is not complete just because there are disciples of Jesus in all twentieth-century "nations," i.e., political states. Within those countries are thousands of tribes and castes and subcultures and languages.

So the remaining task of Frontier Missions no longer is conceived mainly in geographic terms. The question now is, "Where are the unreached people groups?"7

Since the first edition of Desiring God appeared in 1986 there has been tremendous progress in the cooperation of mission agencies, denominations and churches in the tasks of researching and evangelizing the unreached peoples of the world. There is now basic agreement that "of the 12,000 known ethno-linguistic peoples in the world, 10,000 already have a church-planting movement in their midst. . . . [At the end of 1994, of the 2,000 groups remaining ] only 1,000 have virtually no penetration. . . . Today we have a target list of least-evangelized peoples that is being revised each year to reflect greater accuracy. The 100 largest of these peoples . . . represent almost two billion people."8 They are found mainly in the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Animist peoples of the so-called 10/40 Window.9 It seems to me that Rick Wood is not overstating things when he says, "Never before in Christian history has there been such a large movement with so many sincere believers, churches denominations and agencies working together toward the common goal of a church for every people. This level of global cooperation is unprecedented."10


Missionsis Finishable, But Not Evangelism

To keep us sober in our estimates of the remaining task of reaching the unreached people groups of the world, Ralph Winter reminds us of two facts.

First, evangelism can never be finished, but missions can be finished. The reason is this: missions has the unique task of crossing language and culture barriers to penetrate a people group and establish a church movement; but evangelism is the ongoing task of sharing the gospel among people within the same culture. This fact allows us to talk realistically about "closure" -- the completion of the missionary task, even if there may be millions of people yet to be won to Christ in all the people groups of the world where the church has been planted.

The second fact Winter reminds us of is that there are probably more people groups than the ones listed among the 12,000 ethno-linguistic groups mentioned above. He illustrates by pointing out that tribal divisions along the lines of mutually unintelligible dialects may vary depending on whether the dialect is spoken or written. So, for example, Wycliffe Bible translators may detect that a translation of the Bible is readable in a dialect covering a wide area, while Gospel Recordings may determine that seven or more different audio recordings are needed because of the audible distinctions in the larger dialect.

Thus Winter asks, which level of people group did Jesus have in mind when he said, "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the peoples, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14)? His answer: "We'll find out . . . the closer we get to the situation. In the meantime we need to live with guesses. . . . We can only learn more as we go! And at this hour greater human resources are looming into view than have ever been available to the unfinished task!"11

The point of these observations is that the job of Frontier Missions is not complete. In fact the vast majority of missionaries are working on "fields" where the church has been planted for decades. The need for frontier missionaries is great. The Lord's command to disciple the remaining unreached groups is still in force. And my burden in this chapter is to kindle a desire in your heart to be part of the last chapter of the greatest story in the world.

Dramatic Growth!
There are historical as well as theological reasons for hope that the task of world missions is finishable...

Ralph Winter has observed that the drop from 11 to 7 (62%) between 1980 and 1989 (in the second column) is equivalent to the drop from 360 to 220 (62%) in the first 900 years of church history! The two measurements in the second and fourth columns, and the trends that they reveal, are two of the most hopeful insights in the study of church growth. Even though there is an ongoing and urgent need for more frontier missionaries to penetrate the final unreached peoples with the gospel, it seems that the momentum of closure is accelerating. In addition to the iron-clad promise of Jesus in Matthew 24:14, that the gospel will penetrate all the peoples, there is the empirical evidence that this is in fact happening, and at an increasing rate. It is "A Finishable Task"!
Becoming World Christians
I would like to believe that many of you who read this chapter are on the brink of setting a new course of commitment to missions: some a new commitment to go to a frontier people, others a new path of education, others a new use of your vocation in a culture less saturated by the church, others a new lifestyle and a new pattern of giving and praying and reading. I want to push you over the brink. I would like to make the cause of missions so attractive that you will no longer be able to resist its magnetism.
Not that I believe everyone will become a missionary, or even should become one. But I pray that every reader of this book might become what David Bryant calls a World Christian-that you would reorder your life around God's global cause. In his inspiring book In the Gap, Bryant defines World Christians as that group of Christians who say,

We want to accept personal responsibility for reaching some of earth's unreached, especially from among the billions at the widest end of the Gap who can only be reached through major new efforts by God's people Among every people-group where there is no vital, evangelizing Christian community there should be one, there must be one, there shall be one. Together we want to help make this happen.16

The Rich Young Ruler
The biblical basis for the missions commitment of a Christian Hedonist is found in the story of the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17-31)

As [Jesus] was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: `Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother."'

And he said to him, "Teacher, all these I have observed from my youth." And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." At that saying his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God." Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many that are first will be last, and the last first."

This story contains at least two great incentives for being totally dedicated to the cause of Frontier Missions.
With Men It Is Impossible, but Not with God
First, in Mark 10:25-27 Jesus said to his disciples, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

And they were astonished and said to him, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, `With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God."

This is one of the most encouraging missionary conversations in the Bible. What missionary has not looked on his work and said, "It's impossible!"? To which Jesus agrees, "Yes, with men it is impossible." No mere human being can liberate another human being from the enslaving power of the love of money. The rich young ruler went away sorrowful because the bondage to things cannot be broken by man. With man it is impossible! And therefore missionary work, which is simply liberating the human heart from bondage to allegiances other than Christ, is impossible-with men! If God were not in charge in this affair, doing the humanly impossible, the missionary task would be hopeless. Who but God can raise the spiritually dead and give them an ear for the gospel? "Even when we were dead through our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ" (Ephesians 2:5). The great missionary hope is that when the gospel is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, God himself does what man cannot do-he creates the faith which saves.
The call of God does what the call of man can't. It raises the dead. It creates spiritual life. It is like the call of Jesus to Lazarus in the tomb, "Come forth!" (John 11:43). We can waken someone from sleep with our call, but God's call can summon into being things that are not (Romans 4:17).
God's call is irresistible in the sense that it can overcome all resistance. It is infallibly effective according to God's purpose-so much so that Paul can say, "Those whom God called he also justified." In other words, God's call is so effectual that it infallibly creates the faith through which a person is justified. All the called are justified. But none is justified without faith (Romans 5 :1 ) . So the call of God cannot fail in its intended effect. It irresistibly secures the faith that justifies.
This is what man cannot do. It is impossible. Only God can take out the heart of stone (Ezekiel 36: 26) . Only God can draw people to the Son (John 6:44,65) . Only God can open the heart so that it gives heed to the gospel (Acts 16:14). Only the Good Shepherd knows his sheep by name. He calls them and they follow. The sovereign grace of God, doing the humanly impossible, is the great missionary hope.

Two Kinds of Self Love
When Peter blurted out that he had sacrificed everything, he had not thought as deeply as David Brainerd and David Livingstone. As a young missionary to the Indians of New England, Brainerd wrestled with the issue of self-love and self-denial. On January 24, 1744, he wrote in his diary,

In the evening, I was unexpectedly visited by a considerable number of people, with whom I was enabled to converse profitably of divine things. Took pains to describe the difference between a regular and irregular self love; the one consisting with a supreme love to God, but the other not; the former uniting God's glory and the soul's happiness that they become one common interest, but the latter disjoining and separating God's glory and man's happiness, seeking the larger with a neglect of the former. Illustrated this by that genuine love that is founded between the sexes, which is diverse from that which is wrought up towards a person only by rational argument, or hope of self-interest.20
Brainerd knew in his soul that in seeking to live for the glory of God, he was loving himself! He knew there was no ultimate sacrifice going on, though he was dying of tuberculosis. Yet he knew that Jesus condemned some form of self-love and commended some form of self-denial. So he endorsed a distinction between a self-love that separates our pursuit of happiness from our pursuit of God's glory, and a self-love that combines these pursuits into "one common interest." In other words, he did not make Peter's mistake of thinking his suffering for Christ was ultimately sacrificial. With everything he gave up there came new experiences of the glory of God. A hundredfold!

"I Never Made a Sacrifice"
On December 4, 1857, David Livingstone, the great pioneer missionary to Africa, made a stirring appeal to the students of Cambridge University, showing that he had learned through years of experience what Jesus was trying to teach Peter:

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.21

One sentence of this quote is, I think, unhelpful and inconsistent: "Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?" I don't think it is helpful to describe our obedience as an attempt (albeit impossible) to pay God back for his grace. It is a contradiction of free grace to think of it that way. Not only is it unhelpful, it is inconsistent with the rest of what Livingstone says. He says his obedience is in fact more receiving-healthful, peaceful, hopeful. It would honor God's grace and value more if we dropped the notion of paying him back at all. We are not involved in a trade or purchase. We have received a gift. But this reservation aside, the last line is magnificent: "I never made a sacrifice."
This is what Jesus' rebuke to Peter's sacrificial (self-pitying?) spirit was supposed to teach. Our great incentive for throwing our lives into the cause of Frontier Missions is the 10,000-percent return on the investment. Missionaries have borne witness to this from the beginning-since the apostle Paul.

Paul was bold to say that everything was garbage compared to knowing and suffering with Jesus:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ . . . that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings. (Philippians 3:7-10)

This slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. (2 Corinthians 4:17)

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18)

I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (1 Corinthians 9:23)22

Holy Missionaries Are Most Hedonistic
It is simply amazing how consistent are the testimonies of missionaries who have suffered for the gospel. Virtually all of them bear witness of the abundant joy and overriding compensations (a hundredfold!).
Colin Grant describes how the Moravian Brethren were sending missionaries out from the mountains of Saxony in central Europe sixty years before William Carey set out for India. With utter abandon they reached the West Indies, Surinam, North America, Greenland, South Africa, China and Persia between 1732 and 1742-"a record without parallel in the post-New Testament era of world evangelization." In recounting the main characteristics of this movement, Grant puts "glad obedience" at the top of the list. "In the first place, the missionary obedience of the Moravian Brethren was essentially glad and spontaneous, `the response of a healthy organism to the law of its life.'"23

Andrew Murray refers to this "law of life" in his missionary classic Key to the Missionary Problem. Nature teaches us that every believer should be a soul-winner: "It is an essential part of the new nature. We see it in every child who loves to tell of his happiness and to bring others to share his joys."24 Missions is the automatic outflow and overflow of love for Christ. We delight to enlarge our joy in him by extending it to others. As Lottie Moon said, "Surely there can be no greater joy than that of saving souls."25
What Lottie Moon did in promoting the cause of foreign missions among Southern Baptist women in the United States, Amy Carmichael did among the Christian women of all denominations in the United Kingdom. She wrote thirty-five books detailing her fifty-five years in India. Sherwood Eddy, a missionary statesman and author who knew her well, said, "Amy Wilson Carmichael was the most Christlike character I ever met, and . . . her life was the most fragrant, the most joyfully sacrificial, that I ever knew."26 "Joyfully sacrificial!" That is what Jesus was after when he rebuked Peter's sacrificial spirit in Mark 10:29-30.
John Hyde, better known as "Praying Hyde," led a life of incredibly intense prayer as a missionary to India at the turn of the century. Some thought him morose. But a story about him reveals the true spirit behind his life of sacrificial prayer.
A worldly lady once thought she would have a little fun at Mr. Hyde's expense. So she asked, "Don't you think, Mr. Hyde, that a lady who dances can go to heaven?" He looked at her with a smile, said quietly, "I do not see how a lady can go to heaven unless she dances." Then he dwelt on the joy of sin forgiven.27
Samuel Zwemer, famous for his missionary work among the Muslims, gives a stirring witness to the joy of sacrifice. In 1897 he and his wife and two daughters sailed to the Persian Gulf to work among the Muslims of Bahrein. Their evangelism was largely fruitless. The temperatures soared regularly to 107 "in the coolest part of the verandah." In July 1904 both the daughters, ages four and seven, died within eight days of each other. Nevertheless, fifty years later Zwemer looked back on this period and wrote, "The sheer joy of it all comes back. Gladly would I do it all over again."28
In the end, the reason Jesus rebukes us for a self-pitying spirit of sacrifice is that he aims to be glorified in the great missionary enterprise. And the way he aims to be glorified is by keeping himself in the role of benefactor and keeping us in the role of beneficiaries. He never intends for the patient and the physician to reverse roles. Even if we are called to be missionaries, we remain invalids in Christ's sanatorium. We are still in need of a good physician. We are still dependent on him to do the humanly impossible in us and through us. We may sacrifice other things to enter Christ's hospital, but we are there for our spiritual health, not to pay back a debt to the doctor!

Invalids Make the Best Missionaries
Daniel Fuller uses this picture of patient and doctor to show how the effective missionary avoids the presumption of assisting God:

An analogy for understanding how to live the Christian life without being a legalist is to think of ourselves as being sick and needing a doctor's help in order to get well. Men begin life with a disposition so inclined to evil that Jesus called them "children of hell" (Matthew 23:15).... In Mark 2:17 and elsewhere Jesus likened Himself to a doctor with the task of healing man's sins; He received the name "Jesus" because it was His mission to "save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). The moment we turn from loving things in this world to bank our hope on God and His promises summed up in Jesus Christ, Jesus takes us, as it were, into His clinic to heal us of our hellish dispositions.... True faith means not only being confident that one's sins are forgiven but also means believing God's promises that we will have a happy future through eternity. Or, to revert to the metaphor of medicine and the clinic, we must entrust our sick selves to Christ as the Great Physician, with confidence that He will work until our hellishness is transformed into godliness. 

Satisfaction by J Campbell White

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ's purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ's undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.

 

J. Campbell White ( 1909)

Secretary of the Laymen's Missionary Movement 

Lust and Beauty by Checkov

What attracts me?

What attracts me?

Beauty attracts me. She would turn my head in a second, but thats not love now is it?

Author: Checkov

Source: Mvie- "Vanya on 42^nd Street"

Shakespeare on marriage

Many a good man has been saved a bad marriage by a good hanging.

William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night